News for and about the Health 2.0 Community

Apps4TotsHealth Challenge Winners Announced!

At the Health Datapalooza IV Conference on Monday, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and Health 2.0 announced the winners to the Apps4TotsHealth Challenge. Winning teams will receive cash prizes totaling $25,000.

The purpose of the challenge was to leverage two key assets recently made available to the public (healthdata.gov API and TXT4Tots). Healthdata.gov, the HHS open data catalogue, has released a public API that allows access to the TXT4Tots message library. TXT4Tots is a library of short, evidence-based messages focused on nutrition and physical activity for children between the ages of one and five. The library was derived from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents, which uses a developmental approach to addressing children’s health needs in the context of family and community.

While the goal of the challenge was to integrate the TXT4Tots library and messaging functions into existing or entirely new applications, the challenge team wasn’t seeking a typical smart phone app. Rather, the team focused on apps that could illustrate how the parenting advice content in the TXT4Tots library can be integrated innovatively to reach users and make the app an indispensable resource for parents and caregivers of young children. The winning teams proposed creative solutions to do just this.

The myfamily app allows parents to act as their family’s health CEO. By customizing and expanding upon the TXT4Tots message library, myfamily supports family health planning with contextual graphics, links to related content and easy to use to-do lists.

TotBytes helps parents put together nutritional meal plans, allows them to track their kids food consumption, and gives real-time coaching. The app helps parents know what and how much to feed, what to avoid, and how to deal with common challenges of raising healthy children.